


absence makes the heart grow fonder

by emorion



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: M/M, Minor Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, depictions of violence may not be that bad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:54:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25732441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emorion/pseuds/emorion
Summary: "What did he say, Al-Kaysani?" The Christian parrots, though in Italian, and Yusuf has chills hearing his name on those lips. "Why don't I die? As if I know! Do you know, Al-Kaysani? Have you figured it out?""Please," Yusuf frantically begs the man. "Tell me something! What will convince him! I don't know how to help you!"
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 6
Kudos: 172





	1. Yusuf

It had been five nights since he left the crusader that he couldn't seem to kill.  
  
By that time, they had both killed each other so many times they lost count. They fought from the first breath to the last, and then again and again. They fought in the heat of the day and the chill of the night, under the blazing sun and in pounding rain. Non-stop swinging swords and slicing skin, the clang of weapons on shields playing alongside heavy breaths and hardy grunts.  
  
The final (yet probably not fatal) wound had come from Yusuf himself, delivered straight through his opponent's chest. That time, his enemy had only grazed his neck. That time, Yusuf hadn't died.  
  
Instead, he ran. He ran until he found a horse, stole the horse, and rode back to the tents of his camp. In their fighting, the two soldiers had wandered quite aways from the battlefield, so it took him longer than he had expected. He made it to camp by sundown and was met by his fellow soldiers with confusion, some glad to see him alive and others skeptical about his return.  
  
"I saw you die, Yusuf!" Uzair whispered to him, frantic, as they ate by the fire. "The man, he got you in the throat! You went down, I called for you, no answer!"  
  
"It was someone else." Yusuf told him, voice steady. "A lot of men look as I do."  
  
With a incredulous look, Uzair scoffed and returned to his food.  
  
Yusuf understood his companion's confusion, though. He had been going through this crisis since coming back the first time. He had gone through this crisis every time he miraculously gasped again after what should have been the final blow. In fact, he had been going through this crisis twice, because just as he kept on living, his opponent did the same.  
  
The ride back to camp had been long enough to reflect on his situation, however he couldn't come up with anything other than divine intervention, and that didn't account for his god reviving his enemy alongside him. So the only thing he came up with was what he should say to those who watched him die.  
  
He could tell they weren't convinced, but what else were they to believe? Yusuf was still alive, still standing, even after going down many times, with not even a scratch. It was easier to just account it to mistaken identity.  
  
That night, Yusuf dreamt of blue eyes and agonized cries. Pale hands grasping at desert sand, hurling it at the dark wind in frustration. He also saw two women he had never seen before, making battle strategies in dark, fingers buried in long hair and blankets.  
  
The next night he saw the women dancing, hands intertwined as the wind whipped their hair. He saw a knife slice through a familiar neck and as he awoke felt a since of betrayal that didn't belong to him.  
  
On the third night, his dreams were filled to the brim with chaos and blood as the women took down an entire score of men in the dark of night. An axe swinging through the neck of one man while an arrow whirred into the eye of another before two blades moved in tandem to take out a third. He saw a hand squeezing around a cross until blood oozed between the long fingers before throwing the pendant into a fire with a pained yell that became his own as he jolted from his slumber.  
  
He prayed and prayed for the dreams to stop, even tried to stay up through the fourth night. Yet his treachorus mind slipped under just long enough to see the woman riding horses in the moonlight. The man was riding a horse, too, slow and quiet. Yusuf thought he recognized the buildings, but he snapped into consciousness before he could observe that much.  
  
And then there were last night's dreams. They started out calm; the women, brushing and braiding each other's hair, laughing and singing, hands slipping over and under silk nightgowns. Suddenly, the dreams turned to pandemonium;   
He saw very familiar soldiers, his brothers in battle, swords and knives gleaming in the moonlight. Then he saw red, then black, and then he was awake, staring at the ceiling of his tent.  
  
This morning, Yusuf was washing his face in the river when Uzair came barreling through the trees.  
  
"Yusuf! You will never believe this!"  
  
"For the last time, Uzair, the fire is not trying to communicate with you. Even if it could, why would it even want to?"  
  
"The others!" Uzair spat as he heaved in air, "They've captured a Christian!"  
  
Yusuf raised an eyebrow. "Why on earth would they do that?" He asked, gut turning in as he remembered his dream from the night before.  
  
They had never captured Christians before. This wasn't that kind of war. They killed them, or got killed by them. There wasn't time for anything more than that, and it likely wasn't worth the trouble.  
  
But Uzair just shook his head and replied, simply, "Because they couldn't kill him."  
______________________________________________  
  
Now he's here, looking into the cold of the Christian's blue eyes again. It feels like being impaled through the gut. Again.  
  
The man looks tired beyond measure, but his sharp eyes light up as he stares into Yusuf's dark ones. His clothes are torn and bloody, armour absent. While there are blood splatters on his pale skin, he doesn't appear wounded. His hands are tied around the firm post supporting the tent they are in as he slumps on his knees before it.  
  
His mouth is set in a deep frown until their eyes meet, one corner rising up just so.   
  
"Al-Kaysani," a voice from behind the bound man forces Yusuf to look up. It is his commander, the man who Yusuf takes orders from. "You were a merchant, as I understand it?"  
  
"Yes sir," Yusuf nods.  
  
"Do you know the language this man speaks?" The commander asks, gesturing at his prisoner as if prompting him to do so.  
  
The prisoner, however, does not speak. He just smirks and stares at Yusuf, eyes dancing with glee. The commander bends down and grabs a fistfull of floppy blond hair, wrenching the man's head back and placing a blade on his throat.   
  
Yusuf stops himself just before jumping to stop his commander, a reflex he doesn't understand at all.  
  
"Talk you wretched creature!" The commander growls into the man's ear. "Unless you want us to spill your blood again!"  
  
"Go ahead." The Christian spits in Italian.  
  
"There!" The commander smiles, glancing up at Yusuf. "Did you understand?"  
  
Yusuf looks down at the man again to find his piercing blue eyes again, blinking slowly when he has Yusuf's attention. "I do." He tells the commander, still in Arabic. "I know this language."   
  
"Does he not understand ours, or is he just being difficult?"  
  
"Can you speak arabic?" Yusuf asks the man, slipping into Italian.  
  
The Christian's eyes widen at the sound of his own tongue before relaxing again, looking quite smug.  
  
"A little." The man says in Arabic before switching back to Italian. "But I don't need to know what he's saying. He has a knife."  
  
"And you aren't afraid of his knife?" Yusuf asks, still in Italian. He already knows the answer, of course. This is the same man that has died at Yusuf's hand countless times, evidently by the hands of other Muslim soldiers as well, and here he sits. Death is no threat to this man, nor to Yusuf.  
  
The man knows he knows this, too. His smirk turns into a grin as he rakes his eyes up and down Yusuf's body. "You look well, by the way." He says, teasingly. "Have you been sleeping?"  
  
Yusuf feels his own eyes widen at the remark, realizing the implications of that statement. He hadn't even thought...  
  
"Ah, so you're having them, too?" The man laughs, unhinged.  
  
"What is he saying!?!" The commander demands. "Al-Kaysani! Tell me!"  
  
But Yusuf doesn't know. He doesn't know what to answer, what is happening. But for some strange reason, he feels like protecting this man. "He wants to know why you've captured him." He lies. Thinking back to his dream of the man's capture, he adds, "He says he wasn't causing any trouble, just passing through."  
  
"Lies!" The commander bellows, smashing the blond haired head against the post so hard the roof shakes. "You men have NO RIGHT to this land! NONE!"  


"I was not going to hurt anyone." The Italian mumbles. "I was looking for someone."  
  
"He says he was looking for someone." Yusuf translates, desperate for this to end diplomatically.  
  
"I'm sure you were, rat!" The commander all but spits into the man's face. "Do you have a name, then?"  
  
The man squints up at Yusuf. "What?" Yusuf translates, but just the question. The blond replies with a question of his own. "My name, or his?"  
  
Yusuf is almost scared to be in this any longer. Both possibilities worry him, because both answers worry him. He thinks he knows the answer to the latter, but he feels that his life will change forever when he learns the answer to the former.  
  
Looking at the man now, however, Yusuf doubts he will be forthcoming either way.  
  
"He's asking who's name you'd like."  
  
His commander surprises him by shaking his head. "I know this is a lie, I will have no more time wasted with childish games. Ask him why he doesn't die."  
  
Yusuf almost laughs. He almost cries. When he looks down at the Christian, he can see the same emotions glaring back at him like a reflection on the stillest water. Not only did the man understand the question, but he also understood the irony. He smirks wider now.  
  
"What was that?" The Christian asks.  
  
"I know you understood." Yusuf says, anxiety suddenly bleeding into his voice, no matter how hard he tries.  
  
"Al-Kaysani, what did he say?"  
  
"What did he say, Al-Kaysani?" The Christian parrots, though in Italian, and Yusuf has chills hearing his name on those lips. "Why don't I die? As if I know! Do you know, Al-Kaysani? Have you figured it out?"  
  
"Please," Yusuf frantically begs the man. "Tell me something! What will convince him! I don't know how to help you!"  
  
The Italians eyes widen in suprise again, as if this wasn't the result he was going for in taunting Yusuf. "Help me?" He asks, softly.  
  
"We are the same." Yusuf answers, aware of the sudden softness he has taken toward the enemy in front of his superior but unable to amend.  
  
It's strange, how the last time he had seen the man before him was moments after driving a blade through the Christian's heart. And now, here they are, reunited after not even a week apart and Yusuf feels loyalty to this stranger stronger than he does toward his own countrymen.  
  
"I came here for you." The man says, low and sure. "I came here to find you because I see you in my sleep. I've seen you since you first killed me, everytime I close my eyes."  
  
"Al-Kaysani-" the commander demands again, but the Christian is still rambling.  
  
"I came here to find you because I know longer know what else is true! I've fought these battles and this war in the name of my God, but my fellow soldiers are going about, defiling his good name! I do not condone what is being done by the people on my side! I do not understand! Why has God made me like this? Why would he make you, my enemy, the same? Why would we dream of each other, and unholy women for that matter? How can he bid monsters the privlage to fight in his name? I'm having a crisis! I don't know what else to do!"  
  
"Tell me, Al-Kaysani! What has he-"  
  
The commanders final demand is cut off as his head is, blood splattering on the tent and the Christian as the body drops to the floor. In the same motion, Yusuf stops the blade of the guard behind him as it lunges for his chest. Another guard at the door moves at the same time and Yusuf braces himself for an impact that never comes.  
  
Instead, he feels a solid weight against his back and hears the clashing of swords from behind him as he pushes the blade against his up and away, moving to slash the guard in the side. Spinning to the side, he sees the second guard fall to the floor, blade through his neck.  
  
Two more guards enter the tent, the outer guards. They look shocked at the commanders head at their feet and the distraction gives Yusuf and his newfound ally enough time to slash their necks in unison.  
  
"You have to run!" He tells the crusader in Italian. "You have to go as far away as you can!"

  
"I won't leave without you." He tells Yusuf with an insane amount of conviction. "We are meant to fight together. I've never been so sure about anything."  
  
Yusuf doesn't understand why, but he's sure, too. It's a feeling that compelled him to slaughter his own men if it meant freeing this man from his dreams.  
  
" Al-Kaysani?" The man asks softly, and Yusuf is convinced. "Are you coming with me?"  
  
"Yusuf." He answers instead. "You can call me Yusuf."  
  
The crusader smiles, truly smiles, and Yusuf isn't entirely sure he hadn't indeed died and gone to heaven. "Alright, Yusuf." He replies, and Yusuf might actually faint. "Will you come with me?"  
  
"Anywhere." Yusuf answers. 


	2. Nicoló

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The events of chapter one, from Nicky's POV.

By the time Nicoló had woken up, the sun had just begun to set behind the desert dunes. 

It wasn't unlike every other times he had woken from what should have been death, except in one way. This time, he was alone. 

Somehow the man had healed first, and instead of waiting as they both had come to do, the Muslim had disappeared. The shallow holes made by running feet were barely visible, and Nicoló knew they would soon be gone in the desert wind. 

Without thinking it through, the crusader ran as fast as he could, following the footsteps by the light of the rising moon before they could disappear. He hadn't made it a mile from where he started before the tracks were gone. 

Falling to his knees, Nicoló grabbed at the sand, desperate to find the marks again. He called for his God to reverse the winds to no avail. Suddenly, the Christian was overcome in a fit of rage. With a frustrated cry, he threw the sand he had gathered at the dark.

He trudged through the night and by morning he had found the battlefield where he had first met the Muslim warrior who seemed to be gifted the same immortality as Nicoló.

The field was littered with bodies, Christian and Muslim alike. They were lain atop each other as they fell, nearly discernable from one another. Fighting for different gods yet earning the same meaningless death. The same meaningless death that Nicoló had earned, yet for some reason, here he stood.

From the battlefield, he was able to remember his way back to where the crusaders would gather for feast and rest at the end of the fight.

The afternoon sun blazed his neck as he reached his tent. He barely had time to wash and clothe himself before falling face first on his cot. 

His sleep was riddled with images of the Muslim warrior, slashing and raging in a battle. It was not different than the battle the two of them were engaged in for three days straight, but it was not the same either. Nicoló could tell these dreams were not mere memories. 

He also saw two women, pulling a net filled with fish over the side of a boat. The fish flopped around the deck as the women smiled, holding each other close.

He woke up with a start just as the men were gathering for dinner, washing blood and dirt from their skin. As he moved to follow, he asked one of them if they knew the battle plans for the next morning. 

"We were successful in battle here today." A young man told him. "Tomorrow we take the village!"

"And what of the inhabitants?" Nicoló inquired. "Where will we move them?"

"Ha, as if it is our jobs to move them!" An older man exclaimed. "If they don't evacuate our holy lands than we are permitted to strike them down!"

Hardy laughs bounded through the camp at that as Nicoló gaped in horror. "Strike them down? There are women and children in that village. Innocents!"

"Any one who believes in a made up god rather than the one true God is guilty of treason in the highest regard." Another man said. "There are no innocents in that village." 

To say that Nicoló was enraged by this would be an understatement. He was a priest. This wasn't what the Lord would want! It was a Christian's job to share the word of God, to re-educate and redeem non-believers, not to strike them down without mercy!

He had to do something about this injustice.

After dinner, Nicoló went straight to the general to plead a case that felt as good as the Lord's. The general, however, was not a man as pure in faith as Nicoló. He had no interest in gaining followers for the Lord. His taste for righteous vengeance had overcome his quest for God's name. 

"You condemn yourself and all who fight under you to an afterlife in Hell for betraying the will of God!" Nicoló screamed as guards pulled him away from the general. "In spilling the blood of innocence you will render everything we have fought for pointless!"

"I've heard enough." The general said, looking at the guard at Nicoló's left. He saw a glint of a knife before the now familiar feeling of his throat being cut, and he slipped into death once again. 

__________________________________________

When he gasped for life anew, Nicoló found that the general had had his body dumped just outside the camp. He was laying in a trench dug for excess waste with nothing but the clothes on his back and anger in his stomach. He knew he should leave, run so that none would suspect him a demon, as the priest himself had begun to fear. He knew he couldn't leave his weapon though. The blade that had been in his family for generations was probably still lying beside his cot. 

As the crusader washed himself in a nearby river, again only illuminated by the light of the moon, Nicoló devised a plan to sneak into the camp when the army left in the morning. He couldn't stop the pillaging, not on his own, even with his miraculous gift. The only thing to do now would be to run. To escape the horrible atrocities being committed by what were once his people. 

With a heavy head and even heavier heart, Nicoló laid down in the sand to rest. 

Behind his eyelids, Nicoló was visited by the two women warriors who danced and laughed without a care. He watched as they twirled each other around, their eyes dancing with mirth and love. Then he watched as the dream shifted to his immortal opponent as he laughed and sung, face lit up by a fire. It should have been frightening, yet Nicoló felt peace like none he'd known his entire life. 

In the morning, Nicoló snuck into the camp to find it completely empty. It was as if none of the men could wait to get their hands dirty with innocent blood. Surging with irrepressible anger, the Christian decided to take more than what he came for. 

By nightfall, Nicoló was sat by a fire, far from the evil that was his ex-batallion. The horse he had nicked off a (now) dead soldier stood feet away as he looked over his new acquisitions. A heavy bag of coins, a fine water skin, and a golden rosary, all stole from that disgrace of a general. 

Holding the rosary in his palm, Nicoló searched for answers. There were so many things that he just couldn't understand.

The hardest thing for the priest was not his sudden immortality. It wasn't the immortality of the Muslim man or even the occurrence of nightly visions that contained the man and women he had never seen. 

The question Nicoló wanted, no, needed the answer to was here in his hand. Why, if God's will is above all, do men with bloodthirst and a hunger for power get a place in crucial decision making? Why is it that the men who do the most evil in God's name always seem to frolic in riches and spoils? 

Fundamentally he knew that they were going to hell for their crimes against God's word. But right now? In their life? The foolhardy men with their self-serving behaviors would bring suffering to hundreds of innocent people, and God was letting it happen. 

Nicoló didn't realize he was squeezing the rosary until he felt the wetness slipping into his shirt sleeve. With an infuriated yell, he threw the rosary into the fire and stalked toward his tent. 

When he dreamt of them this night, the women were cleaning their blades after a hard earned victory. The taller woman lead the shorter by the hand into the trees before pushing her up against one and sealing their lips together. The dream changed to his Muslim counterpart, scrubbing his face with water. His eyes were deep in thought, his mouth turned down in despair. In this man's expression, Nicoló could see his own trepidation. 

When he opened his eyes, Nicoló felt it like a revelation. He had to find his undying foe. 

______________________________________________

He had been hiding in a Muslim stable when they found him, just getting ready to sleep. 

Nicoló traveled for two days straight to track down the army that coveted the man he searched for. He was close, he felt it in his bones. He abandoned his horse on the outside of the little town before slipping through the shadows to find a place to rest. It hadn't occurred to him that he might be followed until it was too late. 

The stable door burst open to reveal three Muslim soldiers, all emblazoned with the same uniform as the man from his dreams. 

Nicoló turned to run the other way, but he ran straight into the chest of a fourth. He was thrown onto the hard ground outside the stable and before he knew it, his head was met by the handle of a sword, knocking him unconscious. 

They slit his throat in his sleep. He could feel the skin knitting back together as he dreamt of the woman, sighing and gasping in the dark. 

They slice open his gut next. He keeps his eyes closed and is rewarded with a vision of the man he seeks, face once again twisted in anguish and confusion. 

At one point they break his neck. He dies the quickest this way, but he has no dreams. Nicoló decides that it's his least favorite way to go. 

He wakes up on his knees with his hands tied behind his back. He's alone, but he hears the frantic tones of Arabic right outside the tent. 

When the man comes in to interrogate him, he undertands some things, but not enough. He doesn't even know enough Arabic to answer. He's slapped and cut and kicked for every question he doesn't answer, until finally the man calls for help. 

Nicoló feels it as soon as the interpreter walks in the tent. 

______________________________________________

He can see the sincerity in the man's eyes. The man from his dreams. Nicoló knows that the man will help him. He understands it with a clarity he hasn't felt since reaching the holy lands.

Nicoló is so sure that he works to untie his own hands, biding his time by also appealing to the man, who he now knows as Al-Kaysani. The Italian is especially thrilled when he hears the man speak in his tounge. It confirms what Nicoló knows, that destiny brought them together. Judging on the look in the other's eyes, Al-Kaysani knows it too. 

He gets his hands free at the exact moment Al-Kaysani slices through the neck of his commander. The splash of blood does nothing to distract him as he rises to his feet, grabbing the fallen soldier's blade as he goes. 

He's there to deflect the second guard from Al-Kaysani's back, spearing him on his commander's blade. Nicoló finds his own sword, on the other hip of the commander's lifeless body, and takes back what is his. 

As he and Al-Kaysani slay the final two guards in unison, Nicoló feels right.

This is his place. He's sure of it. He's no priest, set out to change the world in God's name. He's no crusader, out for power and blood of those deemed unworthy. He's Nicoló di Genova and his place is by this man's side. 

"You have to run!" Al-Kaysani tells him. "You have to go as far away as you can!"

"I won't leave without you." Nicoló replies, vowing never to lie to this man. "We are meant to fight together. I've never been so sure about anything."

The man looks at Nicoló as if he's had an epiphany, overwhelmed and unsure, but believing all the same. 

"Al-Kaysani? Are you coming with me?" He asks softly, a final plea. 

"You can call me Yusuf." Is the answer. 

Nicoló feels happier than he ever has. "Alright, Yusuf." He replies, trying the name out for himself. "Will you come with me?"

"Anywhere." Yusuf answers, and Nicoló grins wider.


End file.
